What would be your top 5 things?
We don't have a constant oversupply at night anymore which is why they are pushing the smart meters so they can price electricity cheap when the wind blows/sun shines and make it expensive when the wind doesn't blow and the suns not shining. Cheap electricity from 23:00 to 08:00 during the winter isn't going to be around much longer, all new homes are going electric heating and they want thousands more BEVs, demand for electricity during winter is going to explode and they want to use demand based billing to reduce the demand.
Wind hasn't blown for weeks
Yeah don't disagree with all that per se, I suppose I really meant to say that there will still be periods of over supply, and a lot of them will still be at night.
Anyway back on topic!
That must be so annoying.
My old 2014 Leaf could be opened from the key fob!
I don't know where you've been, but back here, in the real world, there's been plenty of wind.
I see no reason for this flap to be locked when the car is unlocked.
Last time I saw something like this was on an old 1999 Toyota Yaris, with the little lever on the floor.
Just bring the emergency charge port open pull cord up above the boot floor. You can just open the charge port there, while you are getting the cables out.
I never take those cables out, this is for tethered at home charging (or rapid charging).
My type 2 cable is buried so far under my boot I'd have to get Indiana Jones to find it 😁
Ok for that I would attach a wireless relay across the switch contacts up front for the pop mechanism.
You'd probably able to make something out of a very cheap wireless door bell. Mount the wireless bell push at your charge point. :)
The fundamental issue is that car originally was developed with ICE / hybrid in mind, hence refueling was only once a week at most.
There hasn't been any significant amount of wind in recent weeks.
A quick back of the envelope spreadsheet off Eirgrid Dashboard shows Renewables (mostly wind) as about 36% of Energy Mix in last 30 days.
Plenty of wind here.
as demonstrated above, 36% renewable generation to me seems like a lot of wind.
that figure goes above 50% at times.
Just so you are aware, smart meters and the smart meter tariffs are not one and the same.
You can get a new smart meter and stay on the day / night tariff. You can't obviously get a smart tariff without a smart meter
You can get a new smart meter and stay on the day / night tariff.
that appears to be very much provider based. Lots of people (me included) have been told otherwise by their provider. Maybe that has changed recently. I’ll ask again when renewal time comes around
what is certain is that you can get the smart meter and stay on your normal 24hr rate but getting a day/night rate seems to be harder to do.
I’m electric Ireland.
I got a smart meter and stayed in my legacy 24/7 plan.
Which provider can you go on day night rate with?
I’d consider breaking my contract if I could do this. SSE told me there’s no going back when smart meter installed. I’m a bit half hearted about it anyway so not going to fight.
The one thing I missed in my research prior to buying my EV was that AC charging is limited to the charger in the car. Didn't even realize that the car had a charger and thought I could get the full 22kw charge rate that most public AC chargers are.
Could you explain this one? I don't have an EV yet, so I'm not completely au fait with everything about them.
AC charging needs a charger between the outlet and the car to "convert" the electricity to DC. My ID.3 has an onboard 11kw charger to do this so that's the max speed you can charge on an AC charger. I believe the Zoe has a 22Kw charger. DC charging is much faster with the charging speed depending on the car
This is a very often found misconception, although you can pick it up quickly if you pay attention to the charging times published by manufacturers. During my chats with EV drivers at chargers I had to explain this numerous times as they were expecting full 22 kW. One was a Tesla driver in Dingle at the old AC unit. He was so shocked about the doubling of the time required to fully charge. There are plugshare comments at various locations where people are disappointed about not reaching full advertised power.
So when we were discussing that it is wrong to call the AC point, charger some called on us as pendantic. But using correct terminology could avoid confusion. Battery charging happens in DC. The AC points are mere outlets, glorified sockets if you whish. Your home socket is rated 13A or 3kW but your phone charges at a 1000th of this power dictated by the phone charger.
The ESB will be burning loads of oil and coal to keep up with demand.
And it makes a difference. My Model S charged at 22kw which made the trips to lidl so worthwhile :)
Current car is only 11kw too so still nice on AC but noticeable all the same.
Are Tesla the only car that can use the high speed on AC?
That’s a bit far fetched. There are benefits
Not even all Teslas. Some older Model S came with dual AC chargers as option. All modern S/X (2017* - 2020) ones are "just" 16.5kW (3ph24A) . Model 3 are 11kW which is de facto standard on most 2020+ EVs 3ph 16A. Another exception is Renault Zoe which charges at max 22kW AC. Historically Zoes would charge only in AC using the motor windings to convert to DC. Their approach didn't take off due to high speed limitation. This system doesn't go over 43kW.
Benefits such as unpredictable pricing and more expensive base rates?
Benefits such as accurate monthly billing.
ability to see one’s usage and manage it better. Identify costs of running appliances and deciding to change.
On the 22kw units like easygo in Lidl and the ESB street SCP’s, the model S with dual chargers and one variant of the Zoe can pull 22kw.
On the fast AC, the MS will still only pull 22kw but that same Zoe can get 43kw I believe.
Most other cars (Model 3, i3, ID3 etc can pull 11kw with the correct cable).
Not all Zoes are 43 kW capable (only Q90) and since they moved to CCS they discontinued it. (2019?) ecars is also not going to support 43kW AC in the future.
All easily covered using a monitor and giving regular meter readings. Unless the smart plan prices improve significantly I'll be sticking to the 24hr plans.
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